The Week: March 5-8, 2011

School is in session on Madison stages this week, with talks by Jill Bolte-Taylor, the Apps family, Lynda Barry, and Peter Galison. The calendar also includes live music by the Andreas Kapsalis & Goran Ivanovic Guitar Duo, Colin Hay, Unicycle Loves You, Ava Luna, and Cap Alan.

After a stroke, the Harvard-trained neuroanatomist lost the ability to walk, talk and remember most of her life, and after eight years, she recovered. She'll talk about her experiences, documented in her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, at this Distinguished Lecture Series event.

This plucky pair performs their live soundtrack to The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a silent, animated film from 1926. As the story unfolds, bursts of percussive sound and improvisational melody fill the score with whimsy and creativity.

After his New Wave band Men at Work dissolved in 1985, Hay's solo career failed to stop traffic until actor and director Zach Braff began including his tunes on Scrubs. A new fan base was born, along with poetic albums such as 2011's Gathering Mercury.

This Chicago band splices together sarcastic vocals, effects-pedal artistry, and bits of tunes by indie-rock forbears like Guided By Voices, Belle and Sebastian and My Bloody Valentine. With Crane Your Swan Neck.

The Village Voice dubbed Ava Luna front man Carlos Hernandez "a James Chance for the Misshapes age," but that's only half of the story. Sharp, angular rhythms and lush doo-wop vocal transform their tunes into a postmodern approximation of heaven. With Laura Gibson, Anna Vogelzang.

Thursday 3.8

NOTEWORTHY: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy debuts on BBC Radio 4, 1978.

The extraordinary cartoonist, who is in the middle of a semester-long residency at the UW, discusses fellow cartoonist Matt Groening, of The Simpsons fame. Groening came out of the world of alt-weeklies like Isthmus, and is there a bigger alt-weekly success story?

The Harvard historian of science gives a talk called "Wastelands and Wilderness," about the problems of disposing nuclear waste, and screens the film Nuclear Underground, a work in progress. The film Superman IV proposed throwing all the stuff into deep space. It didn't turn out well.